Monkey… Journey To The Westis a live action reimagining of the 16th century Chinese legend about a pilgrimage to India, which itself was popularised for Australian audiences in the cult ’70s Japanese television seriesMonkey Magic. The BRAG spoke to Darren Gilshenan(AKA Uncle Terry fromThe Moodys) during the first week of rehearsals about his role in the show named after everyone’s favourite irrepressible monkey.
“You’ve got a great spiritual story in there, really – a classic hero quest story and characters that are willing to sacrifice themselves in order to achieve a greater good for humanity,” says Gilshenan. “So at its centre you’ve got a very strong, noble idea, but then the way in which we play around that is full of colour and comedy and brashness. What you witness in the theatre should be something fun and playful and very dynamic and surprising.”
Though this production will certainly elicit a nostalgic response from many audiences – and Gilshenan was a fan of Monkey Magic – the actor points out that Journey “is certainly different to the what the TV show was. It’s more of an Australian, larrikin kind of take on the story. It has to be of our voice.”
Gilshenanreveals that the robust and often cheeky characters familiar from the TV show are at the centre of the Journey narrative, with Gilshenan playing Pigsy – a rude and flirtatious monster whose lust and gluttony saw him banished to earth. “He wants to pretty much eat everything and jump into bed with everything, so of the four pilgrims he represents the carnal appetite,” Gilshenan explains. “Sandy represents the philosophical way of thinking and Monkey is the irreverent, cheeky element within it that keeps causing mayhem wherever he goes, and then Tripitaka, who is the main pilgrim who the three of us are sent to protect, she holds the story down.”
As this is a new production, Gilshenandescribes the rehearsal room as a collaborative hub, with the actors working alongside co-directors John Bell and Kim Carpenter to express the stories of the adventurers.
“Because it’s a new piece we’re doing an enormous amount of devising, so we have a blank canvas. We have a script which has a great shape to it and a great story within it. The way we’re evolving it is in intuitive layers, where the first layer is we work out pathways and then we add the music and rhymes to that and then we add the tricks and the characterisation to that, so it’s a gradual and enriching process … It is visual and physical theatre as much as there’s a script to it, so there’s an enormous amount of creativity in the rehearsal room, and I’m finding that very exciting.”
Gilshenan also highlights the visual appeal of Journey, with its beautiful sets, puppets (“some so huge they don’t fit in the rehearsal room”) and an emphasis on movement. “I would describe it as a spectacle,” he says. “Stylistically it has a lot of different forms within it – puppetry, kung fu, vaudeville, slapstick; we have lots of music, movement sequences, dance.”
The show features the parkour and martial arts group Team 9Lives and all of the actors have highly physical roles. “I’ve got a background in acrobatics and I’ve done a lot of physical comedy and commedia and slapstick in my time as well, so I’m learning kung fu and stick spinning,” says Gilshenan. “There’s a very disciplined sense of physicality in the room. This is really a celebration of theatricality in all its forms.”
Monkey… Journey To The Westis playing atRiverside Theatre, Parramatta fromThursday October 2 until Saturday October 11, tickets available online.
